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Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Generation Y's and Values

Pat Kane links to this article from Australia about how Generation Y approaches the world differently:

"For them, office life bleeds into personal life, which means the polarities so beloved of baby boomers are blown away. 'It's a new paradigm,' Chalke says. Upwardly mobile is no longer cool. It is now about 'adultescence', a conscious choice to experiment rather than acquire. Verginis wants a home and family, but is not prepared to be a wage slave to get them. 'I'd get a house quicker if I'd stayed in my job,' he says, 'but I don't want to sacrifice what makes me happy.' Unlike his parents' cohort, the boomers, (aged 43-58), he is not chasing utopia, or claiming to get no satisfaction."

Generalizations about an entire generation of people tend to paint with too broad a brush, but I think there is a shift occurring in how we view our purpose and the things we values in our lives. I think we're less willing to live by simple rules governing our big decisions -- "climb the corporate ladder", "get more stuff", "bigger, more, better homes/cars/toys" -- the old rules just don't capture the relativism and varied expectations and values in play today.